VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
Mr Putin's opening address:
Dear colleagues,
This meeting gives the start of drafting the budget for 2010 and the 2011-2012 planning period.
We will tackle several comprehensive problems at once. We must be aware of major limitations as the crisis will tell on the Russian economy and so on budget revenues.
Our basic financial document should be realistic and well balanced, and proceed from explicit economic forecasts. It needs a sufficient resource potential to promote and improve the national economy.
However, it should remain a development budget-that is, tied in with long- and medium-term plans. Available priority projects should be entitled to priority funding. Practical social pledges underlie each of those priorities-the development of healthcare and education, laying in technological and infrastructural reserves, security and regional development. All this, in the final analysis, determines higher living standards and economic competitiveness for many years ahead. We cannot afford to overlook it by any means.
We determined guidelines for Government work through 2012 as early as November 2008, and selected approximately 60 relevant projects to implement those guidelines. The Government has discussed and approved the first pilot project at its meeting today. It envisages pension system development. Blueprints for all the other projects must be ready on schedule-that is, before May 15, and the whole job must be finished and coordinated with budget indices before July 31.
Drafting the basic financial document and priority goal setting for budget expenditures need precise synchronisation and coordination. I call the Economic Development Ministry and the Finance Ministry to report relevant efforts regularly.
To meet planned targets and avoid negative macroeconomic results, we need the utmost circumspection as we earmark expenditures for 2010 and later. We cannot afford squandering. Thrift demands suspending non-essential programmes. We need to make the entire budgetary system more effective and adequate to the current situation.
There is another pivotal objective-to implement a rigid programme for budget deficit reduction from present-day 7.4% to 3% of the gross domestic product by 2011.
The budget must not whip up inflation. We have planned to reduce it to an 8% ceiling within three years, and this remains a topical objective.
We will coordinate the budget drafting schedule today. I appeal to Government members to establish active contacts with the State Duma and the Federation Council at the very start of the budget process. Practice has proved the expediency of such timely teamwork.
Our agenda also includes fiscal policy goal setting.
The latest package of our decisions spectacularly eases the fiscal burden on the economy. We estimate its resultant extra revenues at 600-700 billion roubles this year alone-which means a similar shrinkage of budget revenues. It makes our tasks harder. I mean meeting our social pledges, above all. Still, we have made the step conscientiously to promote production and provide economic resources to resume progress.
The world and national economic situation demands further analyses to support the Russian economy and increase its growth rates according to available opportunities.
For that, we need to streamline taxation, with special attention to the improvement of fiscal administration. Our fiscal system should increase its transparency and get all the easier for corporate and private taxpayers. We must put an end to redundant declarations, certificates and other cumbersome papers.
Regional finance needs our support, and we must provide extra fiscal revenues for the regions. In particular, we want to extend constituent entities' rights of appointing transport tax rates.
Conditions will be created next year for the introduction of the local property tax, which will replace the present-day land rent and estate tax. We mean not to increase tax rates but redistribute the tax burden on real estate, and provide protection and privileges for low-income people and holders of low-price property. At the same time, we will create prerequisites for higher, market-based tax rates for the owners of huge flats, posh houses and vast land plots.
The new arrangement will certainly increase local fiscal revenues. We need, at the same time, to increase the stimulating role of taxation-in particular, go on streamlining mining taxation. We intend to introduce tax holidays for newly opened deposits in the Black Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, and a decreasing coefficient for minor deposits. We will introduce differentiated coal mining tax rates depending on the sort of coal.
On the whole, we expect fiscal policy to become one of the essential anti-crisis tools and create conditions for the resumption of sustainable economic development.
Let us come over to our discussion.
